ANIMALS PERFORM THE BUSINESS OF LIFE 267 



leisure. These few examples only serve to illustrate the 

 hundreds of ways in which animals are fitted to catch and 

 eat their food. The grass or plant eaters are called 

 herbivorous animals, while the flesh eaters are called car- 

 nivorous. 



How Animals Are Adapted for Getting Food. If you 

 were to go to a museum, it would not be hard to answer 

 this question. You could see the lions and tigers, with 

 their sharp claws and teeth fitted for holding and tearing 

 their prey once it was caught, or an elephant, with its 

 curious long nose or proboscis, by means of which it seizes 

 its food or perhaps sucks up water for a drink or a bath, 

 or a snake coiled up ready to strike might fascinate you. 

 Birds with beaks and feet fitted for various kinds of hunt- 

 ing or fishing might next be seen or we might find a case 

 showing how insects of various sorts get their food. There 

 are many strange ways that marine animals get their 

 food which we have not even mentioned stinging ten- 

 tacles by which some jellyfish or sea anemones paralyze 

 their prey, currents of water set up by clams or oysters 

 by means of which tiny plants and animals are carried to 

 the mouth of the creature, claws or pincers of lobsters 

 or crabs which seize the prey, or even in the case of the 

 simplest of animals the whole body wraps itself around 

 the food and takes it in. Wherever we go in the animal 

 world, the most important adaptations are those which 

 give the animal its chance to secure food and eat it. 



Animals Are Like Machines. As we shall see later, the 

 food which is taken by the animal is used to enable it to do 

 work and to grow. Food, like coal in an engine, is burned in 

 the body to release the energy it contains. So the business 

 of living consists in changing the food after it is procured 

 into a form in which it can be used. This we call diges- 

 tion. Other activities are necessary : The digested food 

 must be carried to the parts of the body where it can be 



